Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: Great thespian: Kim Jong-il's political theater


	January 26, 2001	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH
Great thespian: Kim Jong-il's political theater
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Sometimes - not often - the drudgery of being a Pyongyang watcher has its reward. Writing last week, I thought I detected a new and hopeful note in the North Korean press lately. That column ("An outbreak of real politics") was already written when word began to come in that Kim Jong-il was once again in China: his second visit in less than a year, and reassuring proof that one had read the tea-leaves right. Something is indeed up.

A week later, the Dear Leader's trip to Shanghai has been well worked over in press comment; while the implications for any reform back home are yet to be seen. One aspect worth dwelling on is the sheer theater of it all. I alluded to this last week, in terms of the public displays which hide North Korea's real politics. But another angle is to note just how skilled a performer Kim Jong-il is turning out to be.

And as I began with a boast, here's a balancing grovel. Before the Dear Leader went public, I read his chosen hermitude as a character defect, even calling him a "shy dauphin". Was I ever wrong! Turns out that all these years he was planning his launch and waiting for the moment; and preparing for this by devouring the global media, both to get better informed and to learn how to handle this risky circus.

How well he studied was clear from that first moment on the tarmac at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport, when he surprised everyone by greeting Kim Dae-jung in person. His whole summit performance was masterly, turning him overnight in South Korea from a devil to a cuddly uncle. But Kim Jokey-il was strictly for Seoul. North Korean media saw a censored version, preserving his dignity and divinity. In October he did it again: wowing Madeleine Albright, even wafting her off to a mass display extolling communism, and impressing the US press pack (a hard-boiled lot) with his dramatic entrances and evident ability to handle such a high-level visitor despite having precious little prior practice.

And now China - again. For a start, the so-called secrecy added an irresistible aura, even though the first rumors were on the wires when his train - itself a nice touch, more romantic than your everyday plane - had barely crossed the border. In Shanghai, his 35-limo cavalcade wasn't exactly invisible. But how he'll have enjoyed giving the hacks the runaround: seen at the stock exchange, glimpsed at the theater. Security is another reason for doing it this way, but "man of mystery" also makes great PR.

Then there was the wow factor. Kim Jong-il sees Shanghai, and lo! the scales drop from his eyes. So this is what the modern world looks like! "What have you been doing all this time?" he snapped at his long-time aide, party secretary Kim Yong-sun (according to the Seoul daily JoongAng Ilbo). To which of course the retort is: excuse me, o omnipotent one, but what were YOU doing, huh? At one level this is ham stuff. The Dear Leader reads, he watches CNN. He didn't have to actually see the new China to know it's been booming for the past 20 years - while he was attacking reform as betrayal of socialism. Yet this is the way the tanker turns. In old Russia they called it the Tsarevich effect. The Tsar is good, so any suffering is the fault of his wicked officials. In this drama, heads will roll - but not the king's.

Then there's the long-distance audience, especially in Washington. In the theater, timing is everything. What better way to neutralize a potentially hostile new US administration than by sending a signal that he's serious about reform? That must make it harder for rocket man Rumsfeld, the new Secretary of Defense, to forge ahead fast with missile defense against the more cautious instincts of a Colin Powell.

Meanwhile, on a parallel track, the Pyongyang press continues its own smoke and mirrors display. On January 16, Kim Jong-il's first full day in China, the party daily Nodong Sinmun carried an editorial headed: "Let us accelerate the general onward march for building an economic power". That title sums up the new wine in old bottles trick that Kim must now try to bring off. The general tone is resolutely orthodox: seething with zeal for "the red banner of socialism", and ostensibly committed to "our party's line of military-first revolution", it is no doubt meant to reassure hawks in the armed forces.

Yet the military top brass are no fools. They know perfectly well that this year's new slogan of building up economic power - before, the phrase was simply "a powerful state" - threatens both their budgets and their general political ascendancy since the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994. This editorial is silent on markets, which may disappoint reformers; but all in good time. Ordinary North Koreans have yet to be told that their leader was so wowed by the Shanghai stock exchange that he went back for another look. But Korean People's Army chief of staff Kim Yong-jun knows - because he was on the trip, having his nose rubbed in it.

Whatever your view of Kim Jong-il, you have to admire his skill so far. A fawning article once dubbed him "Great Teacher of Acrobats", crediting him for North Korea's world-class circus skills: quadruple back somersaults on the flying trapeze a speciality. Watch him fly - and pray he doesn't lose his grip.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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